Simon flung his sword away and was about to lift Holmgeir out of the blaze when he saw Vidar’s axe raised to strike right above his head. He ducked and lunged to the side, seized hold of his sword again, and just managed to fend off the blade of the envoy, Alf Einarssøn; he whirled around and again had to shield himself from Vidar’s axe. Out of the corner of his eye he saw behind him that the Bjørnssøns and Bjørn of Lunde were aiming spears at him from the other side of the hearth. He then drove Alf in front of him over to the opposite wall but sensed that Vidar was coming for him from behind. Vidar had dragged Holmgeir out of the fire; they were cousins, those two. And the louts from Lunde were approaching from around the hearth. He stood exposed on all sides, and in the midst of it all, even though he had more than enough to do to save his life, he felt a vague, unhappy sense of surprise that the men were all against him.
At the next moment Erlend’s sword flashed between the Lunde men and Simon. Toralde reeled aside and fell against the wall. Quick as lightning, Erlend shifted his sword to his left hand and struck Alf’s weapon away so that it slid with a clatter across the floor, while with his right hand he grabbed the shaft of Bjørn’s spear and pressed it downward.
“Get outside,” he told Simon, breathing hard and shielding his brother-in-law from Vidar. Simon ground his teeth together and raced across the room toward Bjørn and Ingemund. Erlend was at his side, screaming over the tumult and clanging of swords: “Get outside! Do you hear me, you fool? Head for the door—we have to get out!”
When Simon realized that Erlend meant for both of them to go out, he began moving backward, still fighting, toward the door. They ran through the entryway, and then they were out in the courtyard, Simon a few steps farther away from the building, and Erlend right in front of the door with his sword half raised and his face turned toward those who were swarming after them.
For a moment Simon felt blinded; the winter day was so dazzling bright and clear. Under the blue sky the mountains arched white-gold in the last rays of the sun; the forest was weighted down with snow and frost. The expanse of fields glittered and gleamed like gemstones.
He heard Erlend say, “It will not make amends for the misfortune if more deaths occur. We should use our wits, good sirs, so there is no more bloodshed. Things are bad enough as they are, with my brother-in-law having slain a man.”
Simon stepped to Erlend’s side.
“You killed my cousin without cause, Simon Andressøn,” said Vidar of Klaufastad, who was standing in front of the others in the doorway.
“It was not entirely without cause that he fell. But you know, Vidar, that I won’t refuse to pay the penance for this misfortune I’ve brought upon you. All of you know where you can find me at home.”
Erlend talked a little more to the farmers. “Alf, how did it happen?” He went indoors with the other men.
Simon stayed where he was, feeling strangely numb. Erlend came back after a moment. “Let’s go now,” he said as he headed for the stable.
“Is he dead?” asked Simon.
“Yes. And Alf and Toralde and Vidar all have wounds, but none is serious. Holmgeir’s hair was singed off the back of his head.” Erlend had spoken in a somber voice, but now he abruptly burst out laughing. “
Now
it certainly smells like a damn roasted thrush in there, you’d better believe me! How the Devil could all of you get into such a quarrel in such a short time?” he asked in astonishment.
A half-grown boy was holding their horses. Neither of the men had brought his own servant along on this journey.
Both were still carrying their swords. Erlend picked up a handful of hay and wiped the blood from his. Simon did the same. When he had rubbed off the worst of it, he stuck his sword back in its sheath. Erlend cleaned his sword very thoroughly and then polished it with the hem of his cape. Then he made several playful little thrusts into the air and smiled, fleetingly, as if at a memory. He tossed the sword high up, caught it by the hilt, and stuck it back in its sheath.
“Your wounds . . . We should go up to the house, and I’ll bandage them for you.”
Simon said they were nothing. “But you’re bleeding too, Erlend!”
“It’s nothing dangerous, and my skin heals fast. I’ve noticed that heavyset people always take longer to heal. And with this cold . . . and we have such a long way to ride.”
Erlend got some salve and cloths from the tenant farmer and carefully tended to the other man’s wounds. Simon had two flesh wounds right next to each other on the left side of his chest; they bled a great deal at first, but they weren’t serious. Erlend had been slashed on the thigh by Bjørn’s spear. That would make it painful to ride, said Simon, but his brother-in-law laughed. It had barely made a scratch through his leather hose. He dabbed at it a bit and then wrapped it tightly against the frost.
It was bitterly cold. Before they reached the bottom of the hill on which the farm stood, their horses were covered with rime and the fur trim on the men’s hoods had turned white.
“Brrr.” Erlend shivered. “If only we were home! We’ll have to ride over to the manor down here and report the slaying.”
“Is that necessary?” asked Simon. “I spoke to Vidar and the others after all . . .”
“It would be better if you did so,” said Erlend. “You should report the news yourself. Don’t let them have anything to hold against you.”
The sun had slipped behind the ridge now; the evening was a pale grayish blue but still light. They rode along a creek, beneath the branches of birch trees that were even more shaggy with frost than the rest of the forest. There was a stink of raw, icy fog in the air, which could make a man’s breath stick in his throat. Erlend grumbled impatiently about the long period of cold they had had and about the chill ride that lay before them.
“You’re not getting frostbite on your face, are you, brother-in-law?” He peered anxiously under Simon’s hood. Simon rubbed his hand over his face; it wasn’t frostbitten, but he had grown quite pale as he rode. It didn’t suit him, because his large, portly face was weather-beaten and ruddy, and the paleness appeared in gray blotches, which made his complexion look unclean.
“Have you ever seen a man spreading manure with his sword the way Alf did?” asked Erlend. He burst out laughing at the memory and leaned forward in his saddle to imitate the gesture. “What a splendid envoy he is! You should have seen Ulf playing with his sword, Simon—Jesus, Maria!”
Playing . . . Well, now he’d seen Erlend Nikulaussøn playing at that game. Over and over again he saw himself and the other men tumbling around the hearth, the way farmers chop wood or toss hay. And Erlend’s slender, lightning-swift figure among them, his gaze alert and his wrist steady as he danced with them, quick-witted and an expert swordsman.
More than twenty years ago he himself had been considered one of the foremost swordsmen among the youth of the royal retainers, when they practiced out on the green. But since then he hadn’t had much opportunity to use his knightly skills.
And here he was now, riding along and feeling sick at heart because he had killed a man. He kept seeing Holmgeir’s body as it fell from his sword and sank into the fire; he heard the man’s abrupt, strangled death cry in his ears and saw, again and again, images of the brief, furious battle that followed. He felt dejected, pained, and confused; they had turned on him suddenly, all those men with whom he had sat and felt a sense of belonging. And then Erlend had come to his aid.
He had never thought himself a coward. He had hunted down six bears during the years he had lived at Formo, and twice he had put his life at risk in the most reckless manner. With only the thin trunk of a pine tree between him and a raging, wounded female, with no other weapon than his spearpoint on a shaft a scant hand’s breadth long . . . The tenseness of the game had not disturbed his steadiness of thought, action, or instinct. But now, in that outbuilding . . . he didn’t know if he had been afraid, but he certainly had been confused, unable to think clearly.
When he was back home after the bear hunt, with his clothes thrown on haphazardly, with his arm in a sling, feverish, his shoulder stiff and torn, he had merely felt an overwhelming joy. Things might have gone worse; how much worse, he didn’t dwell on. But now he kept thinking about it, ceaselessly: how everything might have ended if Erlend hadn’t come to his aid just in time. He hadn’t been afraid, but he had such a peculiar feeling. It was the expressions on the faces of the other men . . . and Holmgeir’s dying body.
He had never killed a man before.
Except for the Swedish horseman he had felled . . . It was during the year when King Haakon led an incursion into Sweden to avenge the murder of the dukes.
4
Simon had been sent out on a scouting mission; he had taken along three men, and he was to be their chieftain. How bold and cocky he was. Simon remembered that his sword had gotten stuck in the steel helmet of the horseman so that he had to pry and wriggle it loose. There was a nick in the blade when he looked at it the next morning. He had always thought about that incident with pride, and there had been eight Swedes. He had gotten a taste of war at any rate, and that wasn’t the lot of everyone who joined the king’s men that year. When daylight came, he saw that blood and brains had splattered over his coat of mail; he tried to look modest and not boastful as he washed it off.
But it did no good to think about that poor devil of a horseman now. No, that was not the same thing. He couldn’t get rid of a terrible feeling of remorse about Holmgeir Moisessøn.
There was also the fact that he owed Erlend his life. He didn’t yet know what import this would have, but he felt as if everything would be different, now that he and Erlend were even.
In that way they were even at least.
The brothers-in-law had been riding in near silence. Once Erlend said, “It was foolish of you, Simon, not to think of getting out right from the start.”
“Why is that?” asked Simon rather brusquely. “Because you were outside?”
“No . . .” There was the hint of a smile in Erlend’s voice. “Well, because of that too. I hadn’t thought about that. But through that narrow door they couldn’t follow you more than one at a time. And it’s always astounding how quickly people regain their senses when they come out under the open sky. It seems to me a miracle that there weren’t more deaths.”
A few times Erlend inquired about his brother-in-law’s wounds. Simon said he hardly noticed them, even though they were throbbing terribly.
They reached Formo late that evening, and Erlend went inside with his brother-in-law. He had advised Simon to send the sheriff a report of the incident the very next day in order to arrange for a letter of reprieve
5
as soon as possible. Erlend would gladly compose the letter for Simon that night since the wounds on his chest would no doubt hamper his writing hand. “And tomorrow you must keep to your bed; you may have a little wound fever.”
Ramborg and Arngjerd were waiting up for them. Because of the cold, they had settled on the bench on the warm side of the hearth, tucking their legs underneath them. A board game lay between them; they looked like a couple of children.
Simon had barely uttered a few words about what had happened before his young wife flew to his side and threw her arms around his neck. She pulled his face down to hers and pressed her cheek against his. And she crushed Erlend’s hands so tightly that he laughingly said he had never thought Ramborg could have such strong fingers.
She begged her husband to spend the night in the main house so that she could keep watch over him. She implored him, almost in tears, until Erlend offered to stay and sleep with Simon if she would send a man north to Jørundgaard to take word. It was too late for him to ride home anyway, “and a shame for Kristin to sit up so late in this cold. She waits up for me too; you’re both good wives, you daughters of Lavrans.”
While the men ate and drank, Ramborg sat close to her husband. Simon patted her arm and hand; he was both a little embarrassed and greatly touched that she showed so much concern and love for him. Simon was sleeping in the Sæmund house during Lent, and when the men went over there, Ramborg went with them and put a large kettle of honey-ale to warm near the hearthstone.
The Sæmund house was an ancient little hearth building, warm and snug; the timbers were so roughly hewn that there were only four beams to each wall. Right now it was cold, but Simon threw a great armful of resinous pine onto the fire and chased his dog up into the bed. The animal could lie there and warm it up for them. They pulled the log chair and the high-backed bench all the way up to the hearth and made themselves comfortable, for they were frozen to the bone after their ride, and the meal in the main house had only partially thawed them.
Erlend wrote the letter for Simon. Then they proceeded to undress. Simon’s wound began to bleed again when he moved his arms too much, so his brother-in-law helped him pull the outer tunic over his head and take off his boots. Erlend limped a bit from his wounded leg; it was stiff and tender after the ride, he said, but it was nothing. Then they sat down near the fire again, half dressed. The room had grown pleasantly warm, and there was still plenty of ale in the kettle.
“I can see that you’re taking this much too hard,” Erlend said once. They had been dozing and staring into the fire. “He was no great loss to the world, that Holmgeir.”
“That’s not what Sira Moises will think,” said Simon quietly. “He’s an old man and a good priest.”
Erlend nodded somberly.
“It’s a bad thing to have made enemies with such a man. Especially since he lives so near. And you know that I often have business in that parish.”
“Yes, well . . . This kind of thing can happen so easily—to any of us. They’ll probably sentence you to a fine of ten or twelve marks of gold. And you know that Bishop Halvard is a stern master when he has to hear the confession of an assailant, and the boy’s father is one of his priests. But you’ll get through whatever is required.”